At the risk of jinxing it, I'm going to post now about our recent nighttime potty training/learning. I'm going to skip the going-to-bed part of my nighttime stories, cause I'm not quite ready to write about what we are doing about bedtime yet. But there is more the nights than just bedtime...
The Pumpkin has been wearing pull-ups to bed for a long while now. The two weeks prior to this week, she was waking up with a dry diaper. Not only that, but she was actually using the potty and changing into underwear once she got up, instead of getting up and refusing the potty to just pee in her diaper as had happened previously.
Two weeks of not peeing in the pull-up seemed pretty consistent. So last weekend, we finally pulled the trigger, and she got to wear her underpants to bed! How exciting! What a big girl she is! You see how we talked it up. We'd even been telling her for months that at some point she would get to wear underpants to bed.
The weekend went great. She woke up dry, and we quickly took her to the potty once she came in our room. It was a smooth transition... which we of course did not expect to last forever. We knew that there would be middle-of-the-night bed wettings. It was just a matter of when.
Our first was Monday night. Remember, this was only the fourth night of underwear at night, so we didn't really have a middle-of-the-night plan of action. Or brain power.
The Pumpkin comes in our room just after 3 (3:04, for those who care), but stands in the doorway, upset but not really fussing. None of this is unusual, although she normally comes right in and into our bed. So Londo tells her to come on in to bed. She hesitates, but still doesn't speak. Again, not completely unusual. Londo encourages her to come on.
She climbs in bed, but just as she is lying down, I smell pee. As soon as I smell it, I realize the implication and grab her up, practically yelling, "I smell pee!"
Now she starts wailing and flailing, cause I was so smooth with pulling her out of our bed before she got pee on it and notifying Londo of the pee smell. Londo jumps out of bed, and we both remind her that she's wearing underwear and explain to her that she peed and we have to clean it up and get her in new underwear and PJs. She starts to calm down as I clean her up, and Londo gets the bed sheets off her bed and new undies and PJs.
As clean as I can get her with wet wipes and dry, Londo takes her back into bed while I run the peed on stuff down to the washing machine. There was a huge puddle of pee in her bed (thank goodness for waterproof mattress pads, am I right???) and all over her underwear and nightgown. She just peed it all out, as she would have in the diaper.
No harm done. Just disturbed sleep. (Oh, but I couldn't back to sleep for another 30 minutes, and then the Pookie woke up and I was up with him until 5:30!!! URG!) What's new in our house.
We talked about it on Tuesday, reminding her of what she should do in the middle of the night.
Tuesday night, she came into our room about 3:30. Londo and I now had a plan. If she wanted to come in our bed, she now has to use the potty before she does. So when she came in, Londo didn't think she was wet and told her she had to use the potty first. A little arguing, but she ended up going to the potty. But Londo realized that there was actually some pee in her underpants, though not on her nightgown. When I checked, there was also some pee in her bed too.
The good news was that it wasn't nearly as much as the night before. And she did go on the potty and had plenty to go. So she must have felt herself start to pee, stopped herself and then came into our room. I was taking that as a good sign!
Once changed into new undies and PJs, she went to bed with Londo. I put the sheets in the wash, and was able to get back to sleep pretty easily.
Last night, guess what? She came into our room about 2:30 and said, "Daddy! Daddy! I have got to go potty!" Londo took her to the potty, while I checked her bed.
DRY! Underwear, nightgown, sheets, everything! DRY!
And get this: After she used the potty and washed her hands, Londo said, "Okay, time to go back to bed." AND she went into HER room! She layed down in her bed and went back to sleep without anyone with her!
I'm really really hoping that things continue in this trend. I figure there will likely be more middle-of-the-night accidents, but she definitely does not seem to want to lie in it and is listening to her body! Huge wins, in my book! And at night in our house? I will take any win I can get!
12 comments:
Woohoo! So exciting! And don't worry, even if you have more accidents she'll keep getting it. (I totally jinxed it by posting on our local yahoo group that I had nighttime pullups to give away...she had a massive accident that night. But she's almost always dry now.)
HUGE win, indeed! I know of kids that wet the bed off and on for years. Yay for the invention of pull-ups and waterproof mattress pads. Nighttime dryness is really a skill that can take years to fully develop for some kids.
That is awesome!! This stage lasted a while with Mouse (maybe 4-5 months?) and she had accidents fairly often and got upset about them - one trick I liked was to keep a 2 thick fleece blankets in the bedroom - instead of changing the sheets, one goes under the kid (it's enough protection) and you deal with the laundry in the morning.
For Mouse the accidents kept getting later and later at night so I knew her capacity was gaining, and by about 3 1/2 she was fully, reliably dry. W00t.
Awesome!! Especially about the going back to her bed and going back to sleep. That's huge. Tate has decided he wants to wear underwear to bed so I let him last night and he woke up dry. Must be in the air. :)
We're in the midst of this too - just when I think we're all done though, we have another accident. It's just one more of those child rearing things where you go one step back for every two steps forward.
The nice thing about being pregnant while he's going through this is that when he gets up to pee at night, I usually have to go to, so we pee "together" and my sleep isn't really any more disturbed.
Our trick is to make his bed with 2 sheets/matress pads. If there's an accident, I can just rip the top layer off in the night, the second layer is already there, and we deal with the laundry the next morning.
Yay, Pumpkin! That's a big step!
someone gave me a great tip - layer the bed. So waterproof pad, sheet, waterproof pad, sheet. Then you can get one layer off quickly when necessary.
Go Pumpkin!
We haven't had the guts to try this yet.... I know its coming soon, but I'm not ready- whether she is or not!
Oooooh, what progress! This is such a big step for the Pumpkin!
We're getting close with Rosie. About a week or so ago, her pullup leaked and she woke up in wet sheets. I told her that if she pees in her pullup, it might leak, so its best if she doesn't. And she hasn't peed in it once since then.
Then a few days later, I bought her some new Disney Princess sheets. I can't even tell you how much she loves these sheets. Now she is REALLY determined not to pee in her pullup at night in case it leaks onto her new sheets.
So I think we're really close to trying the underpants!
I like the layering tip... I'll have to go buy a second waterproof pad for that but its a good idea to save time in the middle of the night.
OK, I'm totally going to out myself here, but...I am the only one in whose family it is customary to sleep, um...a la commando? I keep giggling at the idea of underpants under PJs because I've always just put the PJs right on. Am I crazy? Or just weird?
Yay! You're so brave. Nighttime pee is a monster I haven't even thought about tackling. E can pee in his diaper at night till he goes to college for all I care, at this point. Maybe once I get my head back on straight, I'll rethink that statement. But for now, I'll start composing the letter I'll have to pin to his shirt when I leave him on Yale's front steps.
hahahaha Charisse, no you aren't the only one. I do too, some of the time (depends on how comfy the particular pj's I'm wearing are, if you know what I mean). My husband does always. My 4 year old nephew often asks his mom if he can go "comfy cozy" tonight, which means commando under the jammie pants.
I'm planning on eventually letting Rosie decide if whe wants the panties on underneath her jammies or not. For now I think we'll leave them on because we have ingrained into her the do-not-pee-in-panties mantra. Commando may be confusing.
Post a Comment